We made our way out of the operating room and down the hall to the morgue.
When we stepped inside, George locked the door behind us.
Paranoia maybe, but for good reason.
The morgue was a large, rectangular-shaped room. It had a tile floor with a drain in the center. The wall to your right as you walked in was filled with drawers. They looked like file cabinet drawers. Only instead of papers, they contained dead bodies. To the left was a Corian counter and glass-faced cabinets filled with various chemical solutions. Beside it was a walk-in cooler usually where new arrivals awaiting autopsy were stored.
George made his way to two side-by-side drawers, both marked Montana. He opened the one to the right, the one with the name Jacob penned on the white I.D. card along with Case Number 33 (Scarlet was 32).
When George slid him out I could see that Jake had been positioned head first. I could also see that his arms, which had previously been rendered in an overhead, pugilist’s position, were now broken in order for him to better fit inside the drawer.
First he slapped on a pair of latex gloves. Then George reached inside the drawer and lifted up Jake’s charred head. He felt around with his fingers until he found something.
“There she blows,” he said. “Looks like the old Captain took one hell of a wallop to the back of the head.”
I slapped a glove on my right hand, reached inside and confirmed the walnut-sized divot in the back of the dead man’s skull.
I slipped off the glove.
“Somebody hit him,” I said.
George shut the drawer.
“I can bet dollars to diamonds he did not die in the fire. I can bet somebody killed him first, then torched the place to cover his or her tracks. Or second possibility is that Jake was walloped in the head and then pushed into an already raging fire. But then, in the end, the results are the same.”
“Cain,” I said.
“We’re getting closer,” he said. “You match up the divot in the back of his head to the barrel of Cain’s pistol, you got a winner.”
“But it still doesn’t do us any good about Scarlet,” I said. “There’s nothing to prove that he had anything to do with her death.”
George nodded.
I asked him to pull her out one more time.
“I just want to take one more look at her. See if we might have missed something the first time.”
He slid her out.
There it was again, that organ slide sensation in my stomach, the pressure in my head, behind the eyeballs. If I just looked at her auburn hair, closed eyes and red lips, she might have appeared to be sleeping. But then, by glancing downwards a couple of inches you couldn’t help but see the lacerated neck and the dozens of cuts and hesitation marks on her chest.
My friend and pathologist pulled her all the way out.
I stared down at her.
Like every time when I looked at her in this condition, I tried to remain as clinical as possible. Not let my emotions get to me; not succumb to the dreaded pressure behind the eyeballs. Maybe I had liked her more than I thought. Maybe I loved her, just a little. But then I thought about murder.
What were some of the things that would lead me to believe another person had stabbed her to death.
First, there would be “defensive” cuts visible in the dorsal or palm side of the hands. In the drawer, she was lying palms up. They were as clean and undamaged as a baby’s bottom. .
Secondly, a murderer would stab repeatedly. Okay, there was something. Scarlet had multiple stab wounds. But then, it was the wounds themselves that bothered me. Other than the neck wound, the cuts were shallow.
Thirdly, the wounds were all relegated to the chest, belly and neck area. A murderer would almost surely have stabbed her in the shoulders or in the pelvic region or even in the back.
Now what about suicide? I thought.
Were there any tentative stabs? Something Scarlet might have inflicted to see how much it was going to hurt before she worked up the courage needed to pull off the entire deed? There were dozens of them.
Did she remove her clothes before she stabbed herself? She had.
Were there any defensive wounds on her arms or on the backs of her hands? Not a damn thing.
I took a step back.
“Homicide made to look like suicide,” I said. “And a damn good job of it too.”
George slammed the drawer closed.
He said, “The job might have been perfect, Divine, if only the killer thought to leave behind a note and a blade.”
I said, “Still, she’s the best body of evidence we have and quite possibly, my only way out of this thing. If only we can manage to hold on to her.”
That’s when it came to me.
“George, pull both bodies. Let’s bag them and get them the hell out of here.”
He looked at me and laughed.
“You can’t just remove them from the deep freeze,” he said. “They’ll start to thaw.”
I said. “How many bathtubs you got at your place?”
“Why my place?”
“How many?”
“Two,” he surrendered.
“Perfect,” I said. “Exactly what we’ll need.”
He laughed again.
“I see what you’re up to, Divine. But it’s gonna take an awful lot of ice.” It took only about five minutes to get them bagged and laid out onto two gurneys for transport in George’s old El Camino.
Outside, I knew daybreak would soon be upon us. I wanted to get going while we could still depend on the dark for cover, get the bodies safely inside George’s downtown town house, get them into the tubs and packed with ice. We would have made it without a hitch too, if only it hadn’t been for that knock on the morgue door. A pounding fist actually, followed by Cain’s voice, ordering Dr. George Robb to “Open the fuck up!”
64
SCARLET’S EMPTY DRAWER WAS still open.
“Get in,” he said.
“Jesus,” I said.
I looked inside the drawer. It was dark, cavernous.
“George, I can’t—”
“Don’t argue,” he insisted, his voice a whisper-shout.
Skinny old George practically picked me up and threw me in himself.
When he closed the door it was like I’d never see the light of day again, never feel the warmth.
But then how do I describe that kind of incarceration?
Being locked inside a morgue drawer, I mean. The same drawer that contained the body of a woman you slept with just a few days before. There’s the blackness you might expect, the cold and the restriction of the limbs. There’s the locked-in-a-casket, buried-alive sensation. I couldn’t help but recall the words of old man Poe: “The rigid narrow house …” No, that wasn’t right. “The narrow embrace of the rigid house …” That wasn’t right either. “The rigid embrace, the blackness of the absolute night—the silence…” That’s exactly what it felt like, even if I could not recall the exact words.
But then there was also Scarlet’s face.
Not the way it appeared in life, but in death, as if her soul was locked inside there right along with me. The pale, closed-eyed face that was attached to the lacerated neck and cut-up torso. Me and Scarlet, we were together again in the worst way imaginable.
I tried to hold my breath, but it was impossible.
No choice but to breathe the cold smell of death in through my mouth while Georgie unlocked the door to the room, allowed Cain in.
“What can I do for you, Detective?” I heard George say, nice and polite.
“Where is he?” Cain asked.
“Where is who, Detective?” George said.
“Your friend, Dick Divine.”
As far as I could tell from inside that drawer, Mitchell Cain was all alone. But then, I had no way of being sure. Their voices were difficult to pick up through the drawer’s steel paneling.
“Don’t insult me, Detective,” I heard George go on. “Mr. Divine
is a fugitive wanted for the murder of Scarlet Montana. I, for one, would not hesitate to alert the proper authorities if I were to come upon him.”
That’s when Cain laughed. One of those loud smoker’s laughs that comes from deep inside toasty lungs. A laugh followed by a couple of lung ripping coughs.
“That was beautiful, Dr. Robb,” he said. “You really missed your calling.”
I began to hear something else now. Like a banging noise, only not a banging noise. More like a mechanical sliding sound followed by a slamming sound.
Cain, opening and closing the drawers.
“Let me tell you something, Doctor,” Cain went on while continuing his search. “If I find out you’re lying to me, I will revoke your license. I will see to it that you do time.”
“Like I’ve already told you,” George said, cool and collected, “I’m not the type to harbor a man suspected of murder. I have my reputation to consider.”
“And what a reputation it is, George,” Cain said. “When was the last time you saw the light of day? You know, it’s true what they say about you.”
“What do they say about me, Detective?”
“That you’re really just as dead as the stiffs you slice up down here.”
“Is that what they say, Detective?”
Cain laughed some more.
“That’s what I say, Robb.”
“Sticks and stones, Detective,” George said. “Sticks and stones.”
Cain—the new Cain—treating Robb like common dirt. I understood then why the pathologist went out of his way to help me whenever I asked for it.
A few more drawers opened. The noises were getting louder. He was coming closer. Lying inside there, stone stiff and still, I knew he could not have been more than a drawer or two away from me.
I closed my eyes, waited for it to slide open.
But the drawer didn’t move.
Instead I heard Cain ask about the two tagged and bagged stiffs laid out on the gurneys.
George said. “You’re the inquiring detective. You tell me.”
I heard what I thought was the unzippering of the body bags.
Cain inquired, “Why do you have them laid out like this?”
“They’re both on their way to Fitzgerald’s,” George said. “For embalming and for burial per the deceased’s instructions.” He paused a beat. “Please don’t hesitate to give the funeral directors a call if you’d like to confirm. You may use the phone in my office.”
I heard the zippering back up of the bags. At least, I thought I could hear it.
“In a little while I’m heading north,” Cain said. “I’ll be back in town by noon. I’ll call then. The bodies aren’t there by that time, I’ll send my own people out after them.”
“I certainly won’t stand in the way of law and order, Detective,” George went on. “Is there anything else you need from me this morning?”
I heard the door open.
“Just remember what I said, Robb,” Cain insisted. “You hold back on me with anything —anything at all—and I will take you down right along with your old buddy. Do you understand me?”
“So help me die, Detective.”
“You have a very morbid sense of humor, Dr. Robb.”
At least he’s got one, I thought from my grave.
The door slammed behind Cain. A second later the drawer opened. I couldn’t jump out fast enough. I had a bullet in my brain. Who knew when I’d be renting one of those things for real? While I scrubbed my face and hands in the sink, George went out into parking lot to make certain Cain was gone for good. When he came back in, his face looked tighter than a tick.
“It’s still raining,” he said. “But the sun hasn’t come up yet. We go now we can make it to my house before full dawn.”
“George,” I said. “You do this, there’s no turning back.”
He said, “Listen, Divine, if it’s not the surgeons looking down their noses at me like I’m not a real doctor, it’s the fucking prosecutors cursing me out for not giving them the pathological conclusions they require in order to support their trial cases. Then there’s the top cops screaming down my throat, insisting I’m not working fast enough to suit their timelines. Believe me, I know what I’m doing.”
I finished drying my face and made my way back into the pathologist’s office. Opening up the top drawer on his file cabinet, I pulled a folder that contained the name and case number of a job I worked on for Cain just one month ago. I shoved it under my arm, met George back out in the hall, gazed into his tired blue eyes.
“Got what you need?” he asked.
“An acquittal would be nice,” I said. “And maybe a new brain.”
65
ON THE WAY UPTOWN we stopped at a Stewarts convenience store.
While I waited sunk down in the passenger seat of the El Camino, George proceeded to clean the place out of its ice.
A few minutes later the sun was coming up over thick gray clouds.
First we transported the ice, then we carried the bodies in through the back door, each of us hoping to Christ that nobody was up early, getting a good look at us out their windows.
While moving Scarlet from the El Camino to the house proved to be a piece of cake, moving Jake was a different story entirely. Didn’t matter that he’d been badly burned. Because of his sheer size and dead weight, we had to set the body down onto a dolly that George had stored in his basement. From there we wheeled him in through the kitchen and, with entirely too much strain on both our backs, flopped him into the first floor bathtub. After packing him in ice, we then carried Scarlet up to the second floor bath, repeated the process.
Having packed them with ice, however, we both knew that their state of preservation (such as it was) would not last. Maybe thirty-six, forty-eight hours at most. Even then we’d have to change the ice two times per day, minimum.
By the time we were through, daybreak was in full shine through the usual gray filter.
Maybe the day was entirely overcast, but this morning at least, the rain had taken a breather. George was good enough to find me a pair of Levis plus a green-and-black checkered shirt. The jeans and the shirt were a bit snug in the waist and chest, but at least there wasn’t any blood on them.
“Now what?” George asked from inside his galley kitchen, a cup of coffee in hand.
“You got a wire tap hanging around?” I half joked.
“How’s about an old hand-held tape recorder?”
“What about a video camera?”
“Super 8 home movie camera,” he smiled. “My old man bought it right after the war. Still works great.”
“Get it out. And don’t forget film.”
“Whaddaya got in mind?”
“While I pay a visit to my ex-wife, I’ll need you to go north, get some footage of Cain.”
“How can you be sure he’s not home right now, catching up on his beauty sleep?”
“Because people in his position do not sleep.”
“Take a look in the mirror,” he said.
“He mentioned going north. I think I can provide you with the specific Woodstock address.”
I asked him for a phone book. When he pulled it out from a drawer in the kitchen, I once again looked up the stats on that Russian cuisine restaurant called The Russo. I wrote everything down on a slip of scrap, handed it to George. I asked him how he felt about renting a car for the day while I commandeered the El Camino.
“If I have to,” he said.
I told him he had to. Then I instructed him to meet me back at his house at noon sharp.
He said he could be ready to rock n’ roll in five minutes.
“Bring cash. No credit cards, no A.T.M. visits.”
He scratched his forehead.
“Ain’t got much in the way of scratch, Divine, other than what you fed me after the autopsy.”
I got his point, loud and clear. That dough was his dough.
“Color eight-millimeter film takes a week to ten day
s to process. But I produce enough working capital, I can get a guy I know across the river to develop it one hour.”
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the Albino man’s envelope, opened it, slid out five one-hundreds for myself and ten for George. There was fifteen more hundreds left over which I stashed back in my pants.
“Will that do?”
“Plenty,” he said.
He stuffed the goods in his chest pocket.
“Until high noon, Divine.”
66
TAKING A TURN ONTO Main in Woodstock, Cain pulled over to the shoulder, parked his unmarked B.M.W. To his right, the Canfield Park and the black wrought iron fence that surrounded it. In the night, the place was empty, other than the swans and ducks that swam in its half-dozen ponds. Not five miles beyond the park’s east end, the wide open farm country of Bethel—the true site of the infamous 1969 outdoor rock concert. Behind him, the sleepy town of Woodstock and the many quaint eateries, gift shops and bars that lined both sides of the historic downtown district. Including The Russo, the first Russian/American restaurant to ever grace the upstate New York community.
Before opening the car door, Cain pulled his 9 mm, thumbed the clip release, checked the bullet load in the light that leaked into car through the windshield via the streetlamp.
Full clip.
Reaching into his leather jacket pocket, he pulled out one more round. Slamming the clip back home he opened the chamber, slid the extra round inside. Then gently closing the chamber, he thumbed on the safety and returned the weapon to his leather shoulder holster.
Lighting a smoke, he opened the car door, slid on out into the foggy, damp early morning darkness. Shutting the door, he locked it with the automatic key-ring closer and jogged across the empty street. Once on the other side, he followed a narrow road that ran perpendicular to Main and that serviced the back entrances of the many commercial establishments. Some five minutes later, when he came to the one that serviced The Russo, Cain once more pulled out his 9 mm, thumbed off the safety and began making his way quietly for the back door.
67
I PARKED THE EL CAMINO three lots down from Lynn and Mitchell Cain’s center hall Colonial.
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